Left 4 Dead 2 was announced at E3 this year. A group of disgruntled gamers have since started a boycott of the game. I don’t want to speak about the specifics of the boycott, but instead, touch on what this means for the games industry.
Have you ever played an underwhelming game? It might be a lack of choice, depth, emergence or fun. Today I’m going to discuss why many games lack that key ingredient to succeed, giving specific examples of how Dawn of War II (DOWII) and Battlefield Heroes (BH) both miss the mark. I’ll finish up by giving Read More
Have you ever written perfect code? If so, how often does this happen? If not, why not, and do you think it’s possible? Perfect code is something that many developers strive for but few, if any, achieve. In this entry, I will discuss the set of requirements that must be met for a developer to Read More
So a few months ago I posted about resigning and how I was planning to set up a software development company. It’s now a little over 6 months later and I thought I’d give everyone an update on how things are going. Walter and I formed Opticode late last year and have been busy making Read More
Quite a few people recently have been blaming Java for part of the downfall in current computer science (CS) graduates. While I don’t particularly like java, I’d like to go to its defence to say that teaching Java is not the real reason that a lot of CS graduates are no good these days. I Read More
For some time now I’ve been asked by a few people to write up my thoughts on a coding standard. To me, coding standards are like source control, until you use them you don’t realise just how awesome they are. Coding standards are a requirement for large software teams, however even if you are working Read More
Now that I’ve discussed why you should be using XNA, I’d like to look from the other side and talk about what Microsoft should do with XNA to benefit both developers and gamers. XNA is a great opportunity for Microsoft to get even further ahead of Sony in the current generation of consoles; they just Read More
A good friend of mine Damian Trebilco has just made public his new rendering technique. It takes the best parts of forward and deferred rendering. A paper on the technique as well as a demo showing it off are available at his Google Code page.
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